From Penn State to Europe, Pro-Rape Forces Regroup After Week Of Setbacks

It was a tough week for the pro-rape forces. Child-raping former Penn State football assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was dragged off in shackles Saturday, and his enablers were fired Wednesday. Voters in Mississippi Tuesday turned back a law banning abortions for rape victims. Even environmental rape was dealt a blow when the media reported the U.S. government had known all along that thrusting long, hard probes into mother earth and spewing disgusting fluids into her caused earthquakes, like the ones that rattled Oklahoma last weekend.

Even jovial GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain was coming under fire just for inappropriately groping some women and making a few disgusting personal suggestions.

In Pennsylvania's formerly Happy Valley college football enclave, a grand jury found in excruciating detail that Sandusky was a serial rapist who'd violated numerous young boys over decades. Aside from his eight Pennsylvania victims, Texas authorities revealed they were investigating allegations Sandusky sexually assaulted another victim while he and the Penn State Nittany Lions football team were at the 1999 Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.

In Mississippi, voters rejected Amendment 26, which would have effectively banned all abortions in the state, including for cases of rape or incest. Right-wing activists had sought to define a fertilized egg as a person, forcing women to bear the children of rapists.

As earthquakes rumbled across Oklahoma, media reports revealed the U.S. Army and the U.S. Geological Survey had long ago concluded that injecting water into deep underground rock formations caused earthquakes.

The U.S. Army's Rocky Mountain Arsenal tried in the 1960s to get rid of liquid waste by injecting it deep into the ground. From 1962 to 1966, the RMA injected salty waste water containing metals, chlorides and organic waste into a 12,000-foot-deep well, but discontinued the practice because they discovered it was causing earthquakes.

"Injection had been discontinued at the site in the previous year once the link between the fluid injection and the earlier series of earthquakes was established," stated the 1990 Earthquake Hazard Associated with Deep Well Injection - A Report to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The magnitudes 5.6 and 4.7 earthquakes in Oklahoma last weekend set off a new flurry of speculation that hydrofracking for gas and oil was causing earthquakes in that state. Oklahoma averaged about 50 earthquakes a year until a couple years ago. Gas and oil moguls began widespread hydrofracking in the state, and, in 2010, Oklahoma experienced 1,047 earthquakes.

By Wednesday night, the pro-rape forces had had enough of the persecution onslaught. It was getting so a multi-millionaire pizza mogul couldn't grope women and say filthy things to them without some sort of backlash.

Thus, on Wednesday night, as multi-millionaire pizza mogul and GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain was harassed with yet another question about his harassing women, the pro-rape empire struck back.

In a scene reminiscent of GOP audience members jeering health care access at the September CNN/Tea Party debate, the pro-rape, pro-harassment audience, apparently fed up with the relentless assaults on their God-given right to defile and subjugate all around them, broke into a cascade of boos and catcalls when CNBC debate moderator Maria Bartiromo broached the subject of Cain's grabby-handed, potty-mouthed conduct.

"Why should the American people hire a president if they feel there are character issues?" Bartiromo asked, and the audience howled and screamed in protest. The audience let it be known that if anyone on the right wanted to grab someone's genitals and make lewd suggestions, his or her victim had better like it.

Cain, who'd been accused of sexually harassing at least four women, and had paid undisclosed settlements to several of them, brashly retorted, "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion." Or, tried at all.

Rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney had Cain's back, as the jeering audience tried to shout down moderator John Harwood's question to him about whether he would have fired Cain for his conduct.

"Would you keep Herman Cain as a CEO knowing what you know?" Harwood asked Romney.

"Herman Cain is the person to respond to these questions," Romney replied, in the Mormon mogul-turned-politico's best impression of a Roman Catholic archbishop.

With "Tora! Tora! Tora!" apparently flashing across the pro-rape com net, hordes of rabid pro-rape partisans roared onto the streets of College Station, PA, battling police, tearing down light poles, and overturning vehicles.

They were enraged that Penn State's Board of Trustees had fired university president Graham Spanier and, especially, football head coach Joe Paterno for covering up and enabling Sandusky's serial child rapes. Paterno, a football coaching legend, had in 2002 brushed off then 28-year-old graduate assistant Mike McQueary when he said he'd seen Sandusky in the school football facility raping a child. Instead of reporting the alleged crime to police as required by law, Paterno pawned McQueary off on the school's athletic director.

The grand jury indicted Athletic Director Tim Curley and school business and finance VP Gary Schultz on obstruction and perjury charges.

The imperious 'JoePa' had turned back school officials' 2004 plea that he retire, and had declared he would finish out the current football season, warning the Board of Trustees not to "spend a single minute" considering his removal.

A crowd of apparently pro-rape partisans rallied outside Paterno's home. Videos showed Paterno leading them in a call-and-response, "We are: Penn State!" chant, as most viewers mentally filled the blank following "we are" with terms other than the name of a school.

Displaying utter contempt for the children who'd been Sandusky's and Paterno's victims, the mob then tore through town, throwing rocks at police, overturning a TV van, and tearing down light poles.

"I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for JoePa going down," said Penn State student Mike Clark, making the point that raping children and covering up the rape so you could rape more children was a-okay with Mike.

"We got rowdy. We got maced," Jeff Heim told the New York Times. "But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend," he said. Apparently to Jeff, raping children and sitting idly by while your friends raped children weren't reputation-tarnishing acts.

Zealots eager to force women to bear rapists' children regrouped as well. Opponents of Mississippi's Amendment 26 "lied to voters and they said lies often enough that they persuaded voters," complained Keith Mason, president of  Personhood USA, an organization apparently dedicated to forcing women to bear the children of persons who were hoodlums. "The people here in Mississippi are mad, and they are ready to come back and do it again," he said, threatening serial action.

Zealots in Florida gussied up their proposed state constitutional amendment to ban abortions for rape victims with the title 'Florida ProLife Personhood.'

"We're continuing on," Personhood Florida ringleader Rev. Bryan Longworth said. "Obviously, the defeat in Mississippi means we have to work all the more harder." As did the Mississippi measure, the Florida measure would define a fertilized egg as a person, clearing the way for rapists to procreate. Supporters aimed for a 2014 vote.

By week's end, pro-rape forces had regained the initiative worldwide. Financial markets in Europe, Asia and the United States rallied Friday on news that Italy and Greece had dumped their political leaders and had voted to mollify bankers and financiers by adopting the most draconian austerity measures yet.

Nothing buoyed the pro-rape crowd more than seeing the rich rape whole countries.

'Mormonism Is Cult' Pastor Declares Christians Are Evil And Immoral

For days now, there's been a bit of a brouhaha over the Dallas Baptist preacher who called Mormonism a cult.

Poor ol' Robert Jeffress, pressed into introducing his fave GOP presidential hopeful Texas Gov. Rick Perry at the Values Voter summit in Washington, D.C. Friday happened to opine afterward that he figured Mormonism was a cult, and that rival Republican candidate Mitt Romney, an adherent of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, wasn't a Christian.

And the media, lamestream and otherwise, had been burning up the airwaves over the matter ever since. On CBS' Face the Nation, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich criticized Jeffress for criticizing someone else's religion. GOP presidential candidate and pizza mogul Herman Cain told CNN's State of the Union that he "didn't want to get into that."

Lost in all that was what Jeffress actually said.

"Mormonism is a cult," Jeffress told reporters gathered outside the Values Voter auditorium. "I believe Mitt Romney is a good, moral person and has a wonderful family, but that's not what makes you a Christian."

Well, thank gawd that's been straightened out. And thank Robert Jeffress for explaining the Inquisition, the Reformation Wars, burning women at the stake, slavery, and the genocide of Native Americans, Jews, and Muslims.

Jeffress said that Mitt Romney was good and moral and had a wonderful family, and couldn't possibly be a Christian. Of course, as Mormons accept Jesus Christ as their Savior, apparently what made you a Christian was being evil and immoral and having a horrible family.

Granted, the whole point of Christianity was that it was for people who were evil and rotten and immoral and despicable. Grace was Amazing because it Saved evil, rotten, immoral, despicable, slave-trading white supremacist wretch John Newton. Grace, or anyone else, didn't get credit for a Save, amazing or otherwise, with a nine-run lead.

Thus, Christianity was a sort of get-out-of-Hell-free card for the truly vile and repugnant. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) was a Christian.

Maybe Jeffress meant that Romney and the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, didn't need Christianity. Just as Gandhi was a maha (great) atma (soul), maybe Jeffress meant Romney, too, was already working with a nine-run lead, and could go the distance without bringing in a bearded closer to nail down the Save.

In fact, back in the day, Protestants invented Protestantism in part because they figured their doing good deeds couldn't get them into Heaven at all, as Catholics had earlier figured. Protestants figured they were so far gone good deeds weren't even in it. They figured the only way they could get into Heaven was through Grace and Grace alone. Jesus had to cut them some slack. Toss out some low scores. Look the other karmic way.

Conveniently, that precluded having to part with any ill-gotten gains they'd spent a lifetime of doing ill to get just to buy a lousy admission to Heaven with a priestly Indulgence.

Which also explained the origins of the Tea Party.

Of course, perusing the liturgical fine print revealed that Heaven in the Judeo-Christian tradition was a special kind of Heaven. In the Christian Heaven, your dead bones arose and were clothed in new flesh, and you lived, in your taut new meatsuit, forever and ever with Jesus in a special plane specifically created for meat-suited reanimated Christians.

This was significantly different from the sort of Heaven other religions promised, which mostly all featured a non-corporeal afterlife of hanging with the Big Guy. So, maybe there was a regular, non-corporeal Heaven for good, moral, wonderful-family-raising Mahatmas and Romneys and Buddhists and Hindus and such with sufficiently good karma, and a separate, fleshy Heaven made just for folks on the good/evil bubble who called in the Beard and squeaked out a one-run victory in the bottom of the ninth.

This separate, fleshy Christian Heaven was the one for reanimated meat-suited Christians like Jeffress and Rick Perry. All the Christians would be there. Tomas de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition, would be there. The Borgias would be there. Gangland mobsters would be there.

All the child-raping priests would be there.

And, it being Heaven, all those torturers and murderers and gangsters and child molesters, not to mention Texas politicians, got to spend all Eternity doing just as they pleased as much and as long as they wanted. The only real requirement was having to say you were on Jesus' pass list.

Which might make one wonder whether Christian Heaven wasn't actually some sort of supernatural diversion program for the otherwise Hell-bound. Sort of a maximum-security afterlife for flesh-clothed undead miscreants administered by an omnipotent bleeding-heart liberal Rabbi from Nazareth.

After all, anyplace that was designed to keep anyone or anything out was likewise effectively designed to keep something in. Maybe, the whole being-reclothed-in-flesh thing was the innovation that kept spiritual third-strike offenders out of hard time by guaranteeing they couldn't wander off into regular, non-corporeal Heaven to frighten the locals with tommy guns and loud country rock music. No need for an ankle monitor when just having an ankle would do.

Thus, the only real issue in the whole Mormonism-Christianity-cult kerfuffle was whether Romney was ticketed for Christian Heaven, with bones and a fresh new meatsuit, whenever he finally got his ticket punched. Being a good and moral person, as Jeffress had already assured one and all, Romney clearly had already made the cut for regular, unfleshy Heaven, along with Krishna and the Buddha and the Dalai Lama.

Either way, Visiting Hours were on Tuesdays.

Rove's Crossroads To Pour $240 Million Into GOP Races

The ragtag gathering clustered around the folding tables in Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, which they referred to by its pre-2006, pre-corporate name of Liberty Square, were an amorphous bunch protesting the overwhelming power of the trans-national corporate megaliths that reigned over Western Plutocracy.

Occupy Wall Street wasn't yet an army, despite inspiring parallel protests in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Occupy Wall Street's supporters managed to raise $8,000 for pizzas to feed the mostly-young stalwarts.

Meanwhile, the big money powers Occupy Wall Street were arrayed against had hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal. The money those Goliaths funnelled into just one Super PAC, American Crossroads, and its affiliate, Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)4 group whose donors remained anonymous, aimed to flood the 2012 elections with $240 million for their right-wing Republican candidates.

The Crossroads groups spent $70 million in 2010 to put Republicans in control of the U.S. House of Representatives. They figured $240 million should be enough to defeat President Barack Obama and take over the U.S. Senate in 2012. The U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling that anonymous corporate donors could pump unlimited amounts of cash into elections cleared the way for Crossroads' donors to bludgeon the American electoral process with the blunt instruments of Mammon.

"I believe that I am not represented by the big interest groups and the big money corporations, which have increasing control of our money and our politics," OWS participant Elise Whitaker told The New York Times.

"Now, the energy, intensity and money is flowing to Republicans and to promote conservative causes," American Crossroads' Jonathan Collegio told The Politico. "Understandably, the left is anxious."

When 84% of America's wealth was concentrated into the hands of 20% America's wealthiest, a political process fueled by money was, for the vast majority, hardly a democratic one.

"This is what the Citizen's United decision has brought us to," said former Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, who lost his seat in 2010 after Republican money moguls spent millions to defeat him. "All of those Democrats are going to need to be prepared for the onslaught."

Former George W. Bush mastermind Karl Rove helped set up Crossroads in 2010, which has lately enlisted another of the GOP's most prolific fund raisers, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

"Both Gov. Barbour and Karl Rove are prodigious fund raisers and brilliant strategists," said Crossroads president Steven Law. Barbour raised $115 million for the Republican Governors Association between 2009 and 2010. "We are reaching high in our fundraising goals because we believe this is going to be a destiny shaping-election for our country."

The destiny Crossroads and the GOP planned to shape for America was one in which tens of millions would be denied access to health care, in which seniors and future seniors would be denied Social Security and retirement pensions, and in which only the sons and daughters of the privileged elite could afford higher education. Not that any of those privileged sons and daughters would do anything at a university except drink and vomit and spend trust fund checks.

Crossroads and the GOP were eager to implement their Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) retooled scheme to dismantle Medicare, Medicaid and even employer-sponsored health insurance benefits, forcing everyone to buy expensive private insurance policies, and pawning everyone off with scant aid from limited 'premium support' tax credits. That way, the rich could enjoy nice taxpayer-funded discounts off pricey private insurance plans they were going to buy anyway, while most Americans would become uninsured and be frozen out of health care completely. Crowds of Tea Party zealots waited their chance to taunt and chant "let them die."

Crossroads and the GOP were eager to plunder all the money in the Social Security Trust Funds, and hand the cash to their Wall Street cronies to pile onto the roulette wheel of international equity markets while pawning Americans off with nothing at all. While the money changers always got their rake, nothing at all was what anyone who'd spent the last ten years buying shares in an S&P 500 index fund got, seeing how the index was at 1,147.39 on October 1, 2001, and closed today at 1,123.95.

The destiny Crossroads and the GOP planned for America was one in which the wealthy and the big corporations got even fatter and surlier as ever more and bigger tax cuts, tax breaks, and tax subsidies transferred ever more of the nation's wealth from the many to the few.

America had once been a country where progressive income taxes created a nation for the middle class, where ordinary people pooled their money and acted through government to provide for themselves public schools, freeways, affordable health care and pensions for the aged, and the promise of a better life for all.

Crossroads and the GOP preferred a country where tax cuts, breaks and subsidies gave the rich a free ride, while anyone who couldn't pay top dollar was consigned to misery, squalor and death.

And, the Crossroads Groups were just two of many groups funded by the torrents of cash trans-national plutocrats siphoned out of America and funnelled into their coffers. Coal magnates Charles and David Koch, with $50 billion between them, would hardly miss a billion or two should it vanish between the seat cushions over at Americans for Prosperity. Rupert Murdoch, a pauper with just $7 billion, could still throw a Tea Party or three.

The ragtag assemblage milling about the folding tables at Liberty Square weren't yet an army. For democracy to stand a chance, they would have to become one.

GOP Rallies Behind Perry In Push to Eliminate Social Security, Medicare

Republicans eager to eliminate Social Security and Medicare have feverishly rallied behind Texas' extremist cowboy Governor Rick Perry, a new Gallup poll revealed.

A week since tossing his ten-gallon hat into the GOP presidential ring, Perry has opened up a double-digit lead over his nearest rival, milquetoast moderate-by-Republican-standards Mitt Romney. The anti-government, pro-tycoon populist Perry led Romney 29% to 17% among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters mulling their choices for a 2012 standard bearer.

On the campaign trail, Perry, who championed abolishing Social Security in his recent book, Fed Up!, reiterated his vehement opposition to FDR's landmark safety net.

"Have you read my book, Fed Up?" Perry strutted before enraptured Waterloo, IA sycophants Aug. 14 in a video clip posted on the Daily Kos. "Get a copy of it and read it!" he said, in full Palin-snake-oil-selling mode.

Perry warmed up to his favorite pitch, crowing, "kids who are coming along, they know for a fact there's not going to be a Social Security and Medicare program!"

"We have to talk about how are we going to transfer over," Perry stumbled a moment, presumably catching himself before he said 'transfer over all the money in the Social Security Trust Funds to my fat cat K Street cronies who'll kick me back a big finder's fee,' and finished by just saying, "How are we going to make the transformation" to a medieval plutocracy where the elderly were abandoned to destitution and misery.

Conscious of rousing a public backlash, Perry spokesperson Ray Sullivan attempted to walk back his candidate's rabid anti-Social Security rant, and said Fed Up! "was a look back, not a look forward," written "as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excess, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto."

Republicans, however, appeared jubilant they had a champion who coveted dismantling Social Security.

The surging Perry had rapidly outstripped the GOP field. Aside from trouncing Romney 29% to 17%, he was ahead of Reps. Ron Paul's (R-TX) 13% and Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) 10%. With Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani in the mix, Perry still snagged 25%, with the Palin drawing 11% and Giuliani garnering 9%.

Gallup also found that Perry was in a dead heat with President Barack Obama, 47% to 47%. Obama, whose popularity has been plummeting, trailed Romney 46% to 48%, and led Bachmann by just four points.

Despite his handlers' best efforts, the indomitable Perry remained scathing in his denunciation of Social Security.

"Social Security is something we have been forced to accept for 70 years now," Perry wrote. He told the Daily Beast, "Whether it's Social Security, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's Medicare, you've got $115 trillion worth of unfunded liability in those three. They're bankrupt. They're a Ponzi scheme."

Never mind that all three programs were actually solvent, and would remain so ad infinitum if the wealthy would pay their fair share of taxes instead of fattening themselves on the unconscionable tax breaks and subsidies lavished on them by toadying GOP politicos.

With Perry as their favorite, Republicans were plunging ahead with their plans to eliminate Social Security and hand all its funds to Wall Street moguls eager to toss other people's money onto the roulette wheel of international equity markets while collecting their rake regardless of which slot the ball fell into. Despite furious public outrage, the GOP was doubling down on their plans to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to insurance industry cronies, and pawn off future seniors with worthless discount coupons the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office revealed wouldn't cover a third of seniors' health care costs.

Republicans counted on repeating the "Social Security is broke" and "Medicare is broke" lies until gullible rubes coast to coast believed them. Republicans knew if square-jawed, photogenic white populists pounded their fists and lied loud enough and long enough, the rubes invariably believed them. Texas was lousy with evangelical revival meetings filled to the rafters.

Perry's even led his share of them.

In fact, Medicare was the most efficient deliverer of health care services in America, with administrative costs of 3%, compared to 5%-10% for large group insurance plans, 25%-27% for small group plans, and a whopping 40% for the kind of individual plans Republicans wanted future seniors to shell out for.

In fact, Social Security was solvent for another twenty years, and, with minor tweaks to payroll taxes, would remain so until starship troopers found a better solution at the other end of the galaxy.

Republicans, however, were greedy for the 10%, or 27%, or 40% "administrative fees" their insurance industry cronies could gorge themselves on. Republicans and their billionaire cronies were too greedy to pay the minuscule payroll tax tweaks that would fund Social Security until genetically-modified, bionically enhanced pigs rocketed across infinity and beyond.

Perry told the Daily Beast he believed Social Security and Medicare were unconstitutional.

"I don't think our Founding Fathers when they were putting the term 'general welfare' in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care," Perry pontificated. "What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address," although where Perry got that notion was, to say the least, unclear.

The interviewer asked Perry, "What did the Founding Fathers mean by 'general welfare?'"

Perry muttered, "I don't know if I'm going to sit here and parse down to what the Founding Fathers thought general welfare meant." Further questions were met by silence.

At a time when half of America's senior citizens couldn't support themselves and millions suffered poverty and destitution, a real American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, told Congress, "If, as our Constitution tells us, our Federal Government was established...'to promote the general welfare,' it is our plain duty to provide for that security upon which welfare depends." Fifteen months later, on August 14, 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act into law.

Nothing could be clearer than that.

GOP Presidential Hopefuls Waver, Waffle, Backtrack and Bluster On Libya Triumph

The best thing about the current GOP presidential hopefuls is when that 3 a.m. call comes, any of them will be able to jump out of bed and whip up a batch of waffles.

Wherever they'd been, whatever they'd been doing, the one thing all the Republican presidential candidates had been certain of was that hapless President Barack Obama had gotten Libya all wrong. Obama hadn't been decisive enough, or had acted too rashly; Obama shouldn't have intervened, or hadn't intervened as quickly or aggressively as he should have.

'Leading from behind,' as one White House aide described Obama's excruciatingly centrist ultra-middle course on Libya, letting France and Britain do all the heavy lifting after the U.S. unleashed an initial barrage of cruise missiles? Ridiculous! Too timid/bold! (Circle one).

Now, the annoying lamestream media was inconveniently splashing onto TV screens around the globe scenes of jubilant Libyans cheering in the streets and tearing down green flags. Now, you could hardly pick up your Blackberry without some wag wagging and tweeting and YouTubing some irritating Libyan liberation meme.

Thus far, the GOP presidential hopefuls' strategy for dealing with all that bothersome Libya brouhaha consisted of mumbling some sort of boilerplate about freedom and hope, while hoping the whole mess would just go away, or at least degenerate into some sort of Biblical Apocalypse.

Now that Moammar Khadafy, billionaire oil magnate and George W. Bush's 'valued ally' in the War on Terra, was reduced to driving around Tripoli backstreets hoping to not get pulled over by the cops, the GOP candidates were reduced to miserable wavering, waffling, backtracking, and blustering. It was tough trying to look presidential while snivelling and muttering. It was tough trying to look like a foreign policy preceptor while pointing over someone's shoulder and shouting, "Hey! Look over there!"

So, here's the rogue's gallery roundup:

• Mitt Romney, who'd been a scathing Obama critic on Libya, mumbled condescending platitudes, and, as any rich guy would, demanded he be handed a payoff. "The world is about to be rid of Moammar Khadafy, the brutal tyrant who terrorized the Libyan people," Romney's statement began with the news in case you'd just crawled out from under a rock. "It is my hope that Libya will now move toward a representative form of government that supports freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. As a first step, I call on this new government to arrest and extradite the mastermind behind the bombing of Pan Am 103, Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, so justice can finally be done." Right. Gimme, gimme, gimme. It's all about you, Mitt.
• Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who'd also been a scathing Obama critic on Libya, stuck to her non-interventionist guns, or non-guns, but congratulated everyone, apparently for ignoring her scheme to look the other way while Khadafy went door to door slaughtering everyone in Benghazi. "I opposed US military involvement in Libya and I am hopeful that our intervention there is about to end. I also hope the progress of events in Libya will ultimately lead to a government that honors the rule of law, respects the people of Libya and their yearning for freedom, and one that will be a good partner to the United States and the international community." Yawn. Enough hopey-changey balderdash to make Sarah Palin puke.
• Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), gave the blandest, most generic bouquet of all the candidates. Must have brushed off a pre-printed Certificate of Recognition and scribbled "Libya" into the blank space. "The crumbling of Moammar Khadafy's reign, a violent repressive dictatorship with a history of terrorism, is cause for cautious celebration. The lasting impact of events in Libya will depend on ensuring rebel factions form a unified civil government that guarantees personal freedoms, and builds a new relationship with the West where we are allies instead of adversaries." Must have scratched out another country's name before scribbling in "Libya," as Khadafy was Bush's bestest friend forever, not his adversay.
• Jon Huntsman had been against the Libya intervention, and his spokesperson Tim Miller was careful to say, "Gov. Huntsman's view remains that intervention in Libya was a mistake, and not core to our national security interests." However, Huntsman's official statement waffled, "The impending fall of Col. Khadafy is one chapter in the developing story of a nation in turmoil. Khadafy has been a longtime opponent of freedom, and I am hopeful - as the whole world should be - that his defeat is a step towards openness, democracy and human rights for a people who greatly deserve it." Not to mention a people who greatly deserved not having Jon Huntsman as the sitting President of the United States.
• Rick Santorum snivelled, "Ridding the world of the likes of Khadafy is a good thing, but this indecisive President had little to do with this triumph. The stated goal from the very beginning for this administration was to determine whether the U.S. can positively influence the direction of a successor government. As we have seen in Egypt, the euphoria of toppling a dictator does not always result in more security for us and our allies in the region." Actually, the stated goal from the beginning was to keep Khadafy from killing his people, then regime change. First Prize for Most Whiney Response. More to the point, Rick Santorum is running for President?  

Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin hadn't made official statements, although Gingrich was for intervention after he was against intervention after he was for intervention; Ron Paul was strictly against intervention, as any libertarian would tell you if a dictator wanted to slaughter his people, oh well; and Sarah Palin was sure Libya made a wonderful canned fruit cocktail (Thank you, Billy Jaye, wherever you are).

If only just one of the GOP presidential hopefuls, instead of wishing Libya a democratic government with freedom and the rule of law and human rights and yadda-yadda, came out and wished Libya would anoint him or her omnipotent Supreme God-Emperor bearing unlimited powers to reign unfettered without let or hindrance so that his or her cronies could run roughshod over enslaved masses to plunder and pillage at will.

But that, of course, was what they wished for America.

Republicans Duck Town Halls, Opt for Paying Customers Only

Bachmann 'Elvis' Gaffe Still Free of Charge

Republicans had an answer for President Barack Obama who last week urged Americans to challenge members of Congress during lawmakers' August recess.

With new polls showing Congress posting a whopping 13% approval rating, and a major-league record 84% disapproval rating, with fresh memories of last Spring's pitchfork-and-torch angry crowds screaming about GOP plans to gut Medicare, with brand new memories of pitchfork-and-torch crowds haranguing hapless pols like Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Mike Johann (R-NE), Republicans have taken to exercising the better part of valor and ducking out of town hall meetings altogether.

This didn't mean there weren't ample opportunities to harangue and heckle GOP pols as they blustered and blundered their way from gaffe to gaffe. There was usually a Michele Bachmann (R-MN) sighting or two somewhere, and as it was Tuesday, she was blowing it with Elvis fans in Spartanburg, SC.

"Before we get started," she said to a cheering crowd in her characteristic nipped, tucked, botoxed, tanning-bed, faux-thirty-something once-and-future cheerleader way, "let's all say 'happy birthday' to Elvis Presley today! You can't do better than Elvis Presley!"

Elvis himself, of course, wasn't doing too well 34 years ago August 16, as that was the day he died, not the day he was born 42 years before that, on January 8. Several hours later, presidential hopeful Bachmann acknowledged The King's passing, without mentioning her earlier misstep. Those major life events were all so similar, they were more than anyone could possibly be expected to keep straight.

It was not immediately known whether Bachmann and her spinmeisters were going to go with Elvis-and-Michele-were-Christians-and-thanks-to-the blessings-of-Jesus-death-was-actually-a-new-birth-into-the-reward-for-a-Christian-life-so-Michele-was-right-all-along dodge.

Other Republican pols were dodging their constituents altogether, as they completely gave up on holding open-to-the-public town hall meetings. Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) neatly cropped coiffure ran into more than one buzzsaw last Spring over his scheme to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to insurance company cronies, and pawn off future seniors with worthless discount coupons the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office figured wouldn't cover a third of the cost of the private premiums, deductibles, and co-pays seniors would be forced to shell out for.

No fool he, Ryan had taken to restricting his personal appearances to private affairs hosted by amenable boosters and attended by pre-screened supporters who'd paid to meet His Sublimeness. Ryan and his cohort probably felt this would increase the likelihood Ryan could enjoy basking in the adoring glow of the grovelling sycophants that he so richly deserved.

Ryan's August faux-town hall was to be hosted by the Whitnail Park Rotary Club, which was collecting $15 a head for tickets to attend.

Ryan spokesperson Kevin Seifert said the $15 fee was the Rotary Club's idea. "It's not something our office can control."

Rotary Club webmaster Pastor Larry Meyers said about 50 people had registered and paid the $15 thus far.

"Paul Ryan has had a hard time going before open crowds," said Graeme Zielinski of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. "I'm sure Ryan doesn't want to go before the public to explain why his extreme ideology caused Standard and Poor's to downgrade U.S. long-term treasury bonds."

That, and while all the pitchforks and torches made for aesthetically appealing television, the needed police escort to get away alive made for something of an image problem.

Other GOP pols hoping to meet a better class of sycophant included Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN). The Duluth chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses was civic-mindedly slated to host a Chip Cravaack meet-and-greet next week for anyone on the Federation's mailing list who wanted to pay the very reasonable $10 per person tab.

"Cravaack's in Duluth meeting with business folk," complained labor leader Chad McKenna, "but the average person on the street doesn't have access to him." Mission accomplished, Team Cravaack.

Rep. Ben Quayle (R-AZ), eager not to have to undergo the grilling McCain endured, was scheduled to appear at an Arizona Republican Lawyers Association luncheon gathering Aug. 23 for $35, apparently festival seating. While McCain was supposedly accustomed to rough questioning thanks to his prolonged Vietnam War confinement at the Hanoi Hilton, Quayle had never had to bail out over enemy territory. Until now.

Which left earnest citizens eager to roast blundering GOP politicians with just presidential hopefuls who were more or less forced to appear before the public.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, himself eager to capitalize on the better-than-abysmal employment numbers his state racked up thanks to unconscionably allowing oil companies to pump billions of gallons of toxic water into the ground and hydrofrack every square inch of Texas, took just four days since announcing his intention to be leader of the free world to thrust his foot squarely into his mouth by dissing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Perry called Bernanke "treasonous," and said, "we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas."

Perry's comments drew the ire of such left-wing pinko extremists as George W. Bush uber-strategist Karl Rove, who told liberal lamestream media outlet Fox News, "You don't accuse the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of being a traitor to his country and being guilty of treason and suggesting that we treat him 'pretty ugly' in Texas. That's not, again, a presidential statement."

And, it being a Tuesday, Michele Bachmann and Co. was giving everyone a free bonus gaffe. She'd told everyone she'd been late for the Black Hawk Republican Party dinner in Waterloo, IA, because she'd been attending a " big family reunion just north of Waterloo," completely understandable for a candidate who so vehemently championed the family unit, so long as that family unit was a God-fearing traditional Christian family unit with a husband and a wife and lots of freshly-scrubbed kids.

In fact, she had not attended the big family reunion, but Bachmann spokesperson Alice Stewart, a.k.a. the hardest working person in show business since James Brown went to visit Elvis at Graceland in the Sky, spun that Bachmann hadn't really lied because she had indeed visited with some family members on or about the date in question.

Stewart said completely accurately, "There was more than one family reunion that weekend, more than one family reunion that day." Stewart did not immediately specify how many of those reunions involved Bachmann's family.

Primary Challenge Could Help Obama, Dems

Even before President Barack Obama began upsetting everyone with his debt ceiling deals, various voices, including progressive stalwart Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), had been suggesting a Democratic primary challenge would be good for Obama and Democrats.

The Republicans' whole raft of primary candidates, running the gamut from Mitt Romney soup to Michele Bachmann (R-MN) nuts, appeared extraordinarily redundant when the sitting President was politically somewhere to the right of Richard Nixon.

Democrats, on the other hand, would do well to put up someone to represent their traditional values.

"If a progressive Democrat were to run, I think it would enliven the debate," Sanders told WNYC radio in March. Sanders is an Independent who caucuses with Democrats.

Add Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to those who had suggested a Democratic primary challenger to the President would be a good thing for both Obama and the party.

"I think primaries can have the opportunity of raising the issues and making the Democratic candidate a stronger candidate," Kucinich said in February. "I think it's safe to predict that President Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party, but he could be a stronger nominee if he receives a strong challenge in the primary."

A poll last fall found Democrats evenly split over whether Obama should be challenged in a Democratic primary. 46% were opposed to a primary challenge, while 45% favored one.

Even Ralph Nader figured Democrats ought to consider primary challengers to Obama, although he didn't nominate himself, as when he ran as the Green Party candidate against Al Gore.

The poll and Sanders' and Kucinich's comments came before Obama's approval rating dipped to 40%.

A primary challenge could help define Obama's positions, and might encourage him to engage and energize his party's base. At the very least, it would give Obama a chance to stand on a stump and campaign, rather than simply cede the primary season election coverage to Republican rivals. It would give Obama a chance to press the flesh and make speeches and do all the things he's good at, rather than just wrangle with recalcitrant lawmakers over budgets and policy disputes.

A progressive primary challenge could help Democrats define a progressive alternative, and redefine Obama's position in the political spectrum from left to center.

It could give the 72% of Americans who believed taxes should be raised on wealthier Americans to preserve Medicare and Social Security benefits an alternative who represented their priorities. It could give the 68% of Americans who believed federal debts should be addressed with a combination of revenue reforms and spending cuts, or revenue reforms alone, an alternative who represented their priorities.

Whatever happens over the next few days in the ongoing melodrama precipitated by the Republicans' unconscionable hostage-holding of the nation's debt ceiling, rank-and-file Democrats, to say nothing of the 72% of Americans who preferred raising taxes instead of cutting Medicare and Social Security, have become increasingly alarmed at how far to the right of Nixon Obama had proven to be.

The nation's debt ceiling is a self-imposed credit limit requiring Congressional approval to raise. Normally a pro forma vote, Republicans have been holding the debt ceiling hostage to political demands they could never have passed through normal legislative processes. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has warned that unless the debt ceiling is raised by Aug. 2, the federal government would no longer be able to fund operations, pay off existing obligations, or send out the 55 million Social Security checks hitting the mail room Aug. 3.

The President's bargain, hashed out with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) because he presumably was a more amenable pea-eater than House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), seemed to enrage everyone from placard-waving Tea Party zealots to House Progressive Caucus leader Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ). Not a confidence builder. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and John Kyl (R-AZ) seemed to like it. Not a confidence builder.

The President's deal to get the debt ceiling raised was purported to reduce the federal deficit by some $2.8 trillion, with $1.2 trillion in cuts to discretionary spending over ten years up front, and an additional $1.6 trillion coming from more cuts and maybe, maybe, some tiny, tiny, non-Grover Norquist-offending revenue tweaks to be determined by a bicameral, bipartisan committee in time to spoil everyone's enjoyment of turkey and football games this fall. Meaning a group of three Democratic Senators and three Democratic Congressional Reps, along with three Republican Senators and three Republican Congressional Reps were supposed to come up with a list of budget cuts and revenue hikes by Thanksgiving, to be approved by simple majority votes in both chambers of Congress. Failing that, $1.2 trillion in mandatory across-the-board cuts, split between defense and non-defense spending, would kick in. Cuts to defense and Medicare were intended to hasten everyone's ardor for the committee process. The Medicare cuts were capped at 2% of Medicare costs, and were directed at insurers and health care providers, rather than beneficiaries.

Total discretionary spending would be reduced by $7 billion in 2012, with half coming out of national security. Like many a pro-football player's contract, the cuts were heavily back-end loaded.

In a bow to McConnell's earlier plan, lawmakers would vote against the debt ceiling hikes, and Obama would veto the disapprovals.

None of which resembled the balanced combination of spending cuts and revenue reforms the President touted and 68% of Americans favored.

Regardless, Obama would get, albeit in two bites, his $2.4 trillion debt ceiling hike, presumably enough to get him past the 2012 elections.

Whether this was a good deal, or whether it would even survive a vote in the House of Representatives, was fairly unclear to everyone involved. Tea Party enthusiasts were unhappy the deal didn't include the guarantee of a balanced budget amendment being sent to the states, didn't cut the deficit by the $6 trillion they wanted, and didn't include a single slogan, jingle, pledge or catchy tagline. Democrats were unhappy the deal didn't include any revenue reforms, and cut Medicare, although House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) managed to prevent a dreaded change to Social Security's cost of living adjustment formula.

(Incidentally, the current, more favorable COLA hadn't raised seniors' Social Security checks in two years, because the plunging price of giant-screen flat panel TVs had managed to offset rising fuel, food, drug and home heating costs.)

All of which made everyone with a set of convictions on either side of the tennis court particularly miffed, a tendency the President had repeatedly begun to demonstrate.

A Democratic primary challenge could help address the ambivalence under the donkey banner. It would let voters kick the tires again, and consider whether the shiny new conveyance they signed up for four years before was really a clunker, or whether it just needed a new coat of clear-coat polymer to shine up the paint.

And, should the President's approval continue to spiral earthward, it would position Democrats with a candidate who owned considerably less baggage.

Pawlenty, Bachmann Wrecking, Building Bridges to Nowhere and Beyond

It was, of course, inevitable that the two GOP Presidential hopefuls from Minnesota would begin squabbling, and it was, of course, even more inevitable that the less popular, attention-starved child would be the one to start throwing paint pots and eating paste.

Sharing too many of the same demographic slices will do that. Both are rabid Evangelicals vying for the theocratist vote, and both have their populist bases in Minnesota. Barney, the purple dinosaur, would tell former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and current Minnesota Member of Congress Michele Bachmann to play nice, because each of them is Evil in his or her own special way. Being that Barney was on PBS, however, neither Pawlenty or Bachmann were probably aware of his existence.

"I like Congresswoman Bachmann," Pawlenty Sunday told NBC's Meet the Press, revealing the depth of his hatred and loathing for his rival. "I campaigned for her. I respect her," he said, ruing his past support and reeking his present disdain, which he specified by adding, "But her record of accomplishment in Congress is non-existent."

"We're not looking for folks who just have speech capabilities," Pawlenty said, forgetting his staffers thought Bachmann, aside from just talking a good line, was pretty sexy-looking too. "We're looking for who can lead a large enterprise in a public setting and drive it to conclusion. I have done that. She hasn't."

Of course, Pawlenty's largest enterprise was deferring maintenance on the I-35W bridge, in the very public setting between Minneapolis and St. Paul, driving it to collapse with the loss of 13 lives. None of which is more important than his being gaga for Lady Gaga.

While Pawlenty's bridge went straight to the bottom of the Mississippi River, Bachmann had recently been busy polishing her Congressional bonafides trying to push her own Bridge to Nowhere. Bachmann's St. Croix River bridge project was an understandably irresistible one for a Republican, as not only was it a $700 million pork barrel travesty at a time when she and her Tea Party cohort was demanding billions be cut from health care for the poor, elderly, veterans and the infirm, it would also destroy a stretch of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, a designated wild and scenic river since 1972.

Take that Sarah Palin! After all, it's so much harder for Bachmann to waste taxpayers' and donors' money plastering herself with enough designer labels to look like a prissy Nascar driver, as she already has so much money of her own.

Of course, Bachmann is best known for her own unique brand of cognitively-challenged information processing. The latest bit involved a bit of Evangelical supremacist gay-bashing which took some heat because it strayed into racist white supremacism. Go figure.

Bachmann had been the first presidential aspirant to sign Bob Vander Plaat's "The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family," another in the interminable conga-line of Pledges with which right-wing extremists have lately proven to be so enamoured. It seeks to oppress marriage and subjugate families. The apartheidesquely-monikered Vander Plaat is the fearless leader of Family Leader, a gay-bashing group that also promotes tax-evasion, conspiring to overthrow America, Islamophobia, and other Republican priorities.

The folks at Family Leader wanted to set the right tone for their gay-bashing, Islamophobic, family-separatist tome with a noble preamble, as what's good enough for the United States Constitution is certainly good enough for self-righteous right-wing demagoguery, and came up with what they reasoned was a catchy ditty that read:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President.

With which Family Leader meant to say black kids born into slavery were so much better off than black kids today. Black kids born into slavery, after all, would belong to somebody, somebody white and responsible and white, and have real value, measurable in solid Confederate dollars on the auction block, and have a real mother and father and white overseers and good genetic material contributed by some rapist Planter, and enjoy steady employment, the warm bosom of a traditional nuclear family, and regular beatings, until the Planter decided to sell off his inventory or let his dogs rip them apart.

To which some of the usual politically-correct rabble-rousing pinko troublemakers, including African-American ingrates and tie-dye wearing tofu-eaters, questioned the sensibility of Bachmann vowing such a vow, inconveniently requiring the earnest Christian hearts at Family Leader to rejigger their earnest preamble.

"After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues...we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued," Vander Plaat said, without specifying what the preamble's unmisconstrued interpretation might have been.

Lost in all the construing and misconstruing was the original preamble's implication that the importance of the traditional two-parent family wasn't really all it was cracked up to be in the context of all the beatings and rapings and dogs and forced labor and all.

To which Bachmann's campaign replied that the "candidate vow" portion of the vow she'd signed hadn't mentioned slavery, only gay-bashing and Islamophobia. Meaning, not only are gay-bashing and Islamophobia cherished vow-worthy Christian and American institutions, but preambles don't count.

Which goes a long way toward explaining Bachmann's overall political positions, as she must certainly feel the same way about the Preamble to the United States Constitution: it doesn't count.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

See, all that nonsense about a "more perfect Union," and "Justice," and "promoting the general Welfare" doesn't count, because it's just all preamble stuff. That's why it's okay not to raise the debt ceiling and default on all the nation's obligations plunging the world into financial chaos, or promote only the specific Welfare of the richest, most privileged plutocrats in Earth history. "More perfect Union." "General Welfare." Pish and tosh. Preamble stuff!

And, that's why Pawlenty, being the experienced self-confessed leader of large enterprises and driver to conclusions of things, and understanding exactly that, as governor shut down the state of Minnesota to crush general Welfare-seeking labor groups. That's why Pawlenty touts shutting down his state as a big win for himself and his rich specific-Welfare cronies, and a big defeat for all those Justice-seeking general-Welfare losers trying to form a more perfect Union with unions.

What could be more clear?

Like Most Republicans, Anti-Spending Zealot Bachmann LIkes Scarfing Her Federal Dollars

Sure, GOP Presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) seems to spend a lot of time shrieking about federal spending, but, like most Republicans dedicated to transferring all of America's wealth from its citizenry to the favored few, Bachmann considers herself to be one of those few God chose to be favored.

Tea Party darling Bachmann alternates between screaming tirades against federal spending and burying her nipped, tucked, botoxed snout in the public funding trough. Bachmann, aside from occasional forays into interpretive history, such as her recent precept that the founding fathers abolished slavery, spends most of her time looking to slash heinous wastes of taxpayer money on such useless extravagances as lavishing benefits on veterans who hadn't had the good sense to get themselves killed for their country.

Now, on top of the recent revelation that the Bachmann family farm enjoyed fat federal subsidies, NBC has revealed that her husband's clinic enjoyed fat Medicaid billings.

The Wisconsin farm owned by Bachmann's late father-in-law, Paul Bachmann, and in which the candidate is still a partner, over the years received $260,000 in federal farm subsidies.

"Again, we've answered that question so many times that everyone's tired of it," Bachmann said snippily. "There's nothing to it. We've never gotten a dime."

Aside from it being unseemly whenever anyone other than Queen Elizabeth II of England or Rickey Henderson speaks in the royal plural, Bachmann is technically correct in asserting that she'd never gotten "a" dime from the farm or the subsidies.

Actually, she'd gotten anywhere from $32,503 to $105,000 from the farm between 2006 and 2009. That's anywhere from 325,000 to 1,050,000 dimes. Get with the program, people. And, some founding fathers, such as Alexander Hamilton, were really, really against slavery. Really. Hamilton was an early abolitionist.

Of course, the anti-slavery torch bearer Bachmann named was John Quincy Adams, who was about nine when folks were whipping up the Declaration of Independence.

In current events, NBC stated Bachmann & Associates' Lake Elmo, MN clinic collected more than $137,000 in Medicaid payments since 2005. The clinic, founded by Bachmann's clinical therapist husband, Marcus, also accepted $24,000 in state and federal funds to train staff on dealing with drug dependant and mentally ill patients.

According to its website, the clinic provides "quality Christian counseling in a sensitive, loving environment." It wasn't immediately known what was meant by "Christian," although Bachmann's harangues against wasting taxpayer dollars would be quite understandable if they were being used to pay for laying on hands, handling snakes, and speaking in tongues.

Bachmann spokesperson Alice Stewart defended her boss Wednesday with a statement to the effect that turning away Medicaid patients would be discriminatory.

Yes, that's lovely. We have nothing against Medicaid patients, although we're not convinced of the efficacy of waving snakes at them. We're all for expanding Medicaid and Medicare, which are the most efficient ways of delivering health care, bypassing all those insurance company corporate suites and all the mega-yachts, corporate jets and fat executive compensation packages they tend to devour.

What we have a problem with is Michele Bachmann constantly dissing Medicaid for adding to the welfare rolls, then finding out some of those Medicaid dollars, after going in an out of Bachmann bank accounts, end up nipping and tucking and botoxing the quintessential nipped, tucked, botoxed, faux-thirty trophy Legislator who struts onto Fox News and tells Bill O'Reilly, "I don't need government to be successful."

Let's see: $260,000 + $137,000 + $24,000. Most people would count a $421,000 haul as pretty successful.

Perhaps people who get $421,000 from the government can afford some sort of secret Republicans-only time machine that enables folks like Bachmann and Sarah Palin to go back in time to discover that nine-year-old John Quincy Adams refused to eat his broccoli as part of a hunger strike protesting the institution of slavery, and that Paul Revere really did warn the British, and let Benedict Arnold take the fall.

More recently, Bachmann dissed Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton's January executive order expanding the state's Medicaid program, saying, "Right now, Gov. Dayton is wanting to commit Minnesota taxpayers to add even more welfare recipients on the welfare rolls at very great cost."

Of course, what Bachmann, and Tea Party zealots, and just about any Republican means is that Americans shouldn't be spending money to benefit the poor, or people of color. What Bachmann, and Tea Party zealots, and Republicans really mean is that all that money should just be handed directly to Bachmann, and Tea Party zealots, and Republicans, preferably ones who are white and rich and filled with hate for anyone who isn't a Bachmann or a Tea Party zealot or a Republican. Money going to Bachmann and her cohort is not only okay, it's fulfilling the ultimate destiny God meant for all money, joining the 84% of America's wealth that's already been concentrated into the hands of 20% of America's most blessed Bachmanns and Tea Party zealots and Republicans and their string-pulling patrons.

"It's clear when it feathers her nest, she's happy for Medicaid expenditures," said Ron Pollock of the health care advocacy group Families USA. "But people that really need it, folks with disabilities and seniors, she's turning their backs on them."

Bachmann said, "They want to see two girls come together and have a mud wrestling fight," changing the subject.

Supreme Corporate Declares Corporations Supreme: High Court Strikes Down Arizona Campaign Law

In dealing yet another blow against free speech, the Supreme Court, by the proverbial 5-4 margin, Monday struck down an Arizona campaign finance law that gave candidates in that state public matching funds when being outspent by well-heeled corporate stooges.

In a brazen display of partisan zealotry, Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr. assumed all the corporate stooges would be Republicans, and once again led the five-man charge to shred Bill of Rights. Roberts wrote, "Laws like Arizona's matching funds provision that inhibit robust and wide open political debate without sufficient justification cannot stand." Roberts apparently believed that the Arizona law inhibited the robust and wide open buying of political offices, and moved decisively to stop such nonsense.

Roberts and his pals on the High Court's ideological right consider corporations to be people, and cash to be speech. It was not immediately known exactly how many conversations Roberts and his cohort, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Jr., Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy, got for their decision.

In a mind-bending rationalization of their toadying to the ultra-wealthy, the right-wing Supreme Corporates reasoned that big-money interests might be discouraged from monopolizing all the TV airtime, radio spots, campaign flyers and phone calls in an election if they knew that, whatever they spent, the other side would get public funds to match them. The Roberts Court essentially said free speech meant that not only do the very rich get to speak, they get to prevent others from speaking because the others might make the very rich shy. Roberts and his pals certainly earned many conversations with those acrobatic musings.

Apparently, to Roberts and his cohort, the only free speech is paid corporate speech.

The Arizona 1998 Citizens Clean Elections Act had allowed candidates to opt out of unlimited privately-funded campaigns and accept public financing instead. To level the playing field, as long as the candidate participated in a debate and agreed to give back any money she didn't need, the state would match the amount well-heeled private donors lavished on pet candidates opposing her.

In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagen, one of the four non-partisan judges arrayed against the five corporate activist ideologues, wrote for the minority,

"The First Amendment's core purpose is to foster a healthy, vibrant political system full of robust discussion and debate. Nothing in Arizona's anti-corruption statute, The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act, violates this constitutional protection. To the contrary, the act promotes the values underlying both the First Amendment and our entire Constitution by enhancing the 'opportunity for free political discussion to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people.'"

As usual, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor joined in the dissent.

"What the law does...is fund more speech," Kagan said.

Roberts wasn't interested in more speech. Roberts only cared about speech pushing the ultra-wealthy's agenda. "Levelling the playing field can sound like a good thing," Roberts said of something that was as good as it sounded. "But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game." Roberts did not specify what it was instead, although his decision implied some sort of auction.

As they did with their infamous Citizens United case in 2009, the Roberts Court figured the candidates with the most money behind them should win all the elections. Roberts and his gang refused to countenance the notion that poorly-funded candidates and issues had any business trying to get their message out to the electorate.

Roberts didn't say when his cohort planned on dispensing with elections all together, and moving to a system in which the candidate backed by the largest corporations would simply be anointed.

In the 2009 Citizens United case, the same Roberts Court gang of five struck down decades of precedent and unleashed unlimited corporate funding of elections. Laws in 24 states that prohibited corporations smothering elections with mountains of cash fell before the juggernaut of right-wing plutocratization.

Roberts, Scalia, Alito, Kennedy and Thomas appeared confident Republicans would always get the lion's share of corporate patronage, but the Chief Justice hedged a bit against the day the GOP figured out how to plunder public campaign funds. "We do not today call into question the wisdom of public financing as a means of funding political candidacy," Roberts elevated himself to the royal plural. "That is not our business."

The business of the Supreme Court is, apparently, Business.

Republicans Snatch Kids' Lunch Money, Snag Right-Wing Christian Cheers

Moving swiftly and decisively, House Republicans declared they won't waste money on fruits and vegetables for kids' school lunches, but deemed kids should be smoking more cigarettes. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee slammed through a measure nixing new nutritional guidelines from the Agriculture Department that were part of President Barack Obama's campaign against childhood obesity. Republicans crowed eliminating guidelines that pushed healthier meals saved $7 billion over five years, money better spent on fat tax breaks for wealthy Americans. At the same time, committee Republicans stopped the Food and Drug Administration from regulating the menthol that entices new smokers to get hooked on tobacco.

"It would undo the one thing that all members of Congress agreed upon, which was to protect kids from tobacco," said Matthew Myers, President of Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.

One thing all Republicans could agree upon is supporting GOP money men who've run afoul of federal prosecutors. Having successfully snatched $7 billion from kids' lunch money to offer up to their wealthy patrons in the form of more tax cuts, they marched over to Ralph Reed's fabulous right-wing Faith and Freedom Coalition confab in Washington, D.C.

Reed was best known for taking sackfuls of Jack Abramoff's money and organizing his Christian Coalition pals into an anti-gambling campaign meant to scare Native American tribes into giving their lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, even more money - up to $82 million more - to secure the gaming rights being campaigned against. There were questions, prosecutors, FBI agents, and some jail time for Abramoff. Pish and tosh. Reed and his college pals Abramoff and Grover Norquist got into lots of similar fun stuff dating back to their college days, Reed getting kicked off the University of Georgia school paper for plagiarism, getting accused of rigging a college Republican group election, and heading up the Christian Coalition, which came to the attention of federal prosecutors for mailing list- and contractor billing-hanky panky.

So, all the GOP biggies trooped over to their old pal Ralph Reed's shindig, seeing how he's so one of the boys. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was there, as was Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). GOP Presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, and not-so-hopefuls "The" Donald Trump, and Haley Barbour were there. Gary Bauer from American Values, and David Brody from Christian Broadcasting were there. Of course, college chum Grover Norquist was on hand.

Cantor thanked Reed for "standing up for the greatness of America during these difficult times."

Everyone trumpeted how great it was to be Christians taking kids' lunch money, busting Medicare, and scheming to privatize Social Security by plundering all its money and handing it to very pious Wall Street cronies. Paul Ryan (R-WI) was on hand to push what a great advance for Christianity it would be to destroy Medicare, hand all its money to their sacred insurance industry cronies, and pawn off future seniors with worthless coupons the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office figured wouldn't cover a third of those heathens' premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and other expenses.

"Our rights are not given to us from government," Ryan said solemnly, "our rights are ours naturally, given by God." Apparently, when God grants medical care to the righteous, God wisely measuring one's righteousness by the size of one's investment portfolio.

Ryan is an Ayn Rand acolyte, who, like his guru, believes self-gratification is the only goal in life, and morality and altruism are for losers. Rand was an atheist who rejected religion-based morality

Rand seemed to have supplanted Christ among the latter-day religious enthusiasts at Faith and Freedom.

Ken Blackwell, ex-Ohio Secretary of State and Club For Growth overlord, said "Religious liberty, economic freedom, and political freedom are inextricably linked....When you begin to let moral relativism bleed into the marketplace, bleed into the public square, and become controlling, government replaces God."

In case anyone was seeking Truth and The Meaning of Life, there you have it: God is the Free Market.

In contemporary right-wing Republican Christianity, everybody gives Jesus two loaves and a fish at his IPO, and Jesus becomes a billionaire corporate tycoon who buys off  Pontius Pilate, then cheats on his trophy wife with Mary Magdalene.

"We cannot fix the fiscal until we fix the family," said Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, not to be confused with the Tony Perkins who hacked Janet Leigh to death in the shower scene in Psycho. The actor Tony Perkins was really a very nice person who just portrayed a psycho in a movie.

Fixing the fiscal and the family consisted of bashing Barack Obama, damning Obama's health care reforms while championing Republican plots to dismantle Medicare, and generally demonizing same-sex marriage, womens' choice, and anything that might slow trans-national plutocrats running roughshod over poor- and middle-class Americans.

The weekend was a triumph for Reed, who many had figured was politically dead and buried after the Abramoff humiliation.

A few weeks back, another televangelist, Harold Camping, predicted that on May 21, the righteous would be Raptured up to God, and all the heretics and heathens would be forced to remain on Earth suffering the excoriations of the End Times until the planet finally blew up on Judgement Day. May 21 came and went, no one was Raptured up, and everyone made fun of Camping for another blown Apocalypse prediction.

In fact, if Camping had been correct, how could anyone tell? Maybe there just wasn't anybody righteous enough to be Raptured up. After all, Ralph Reed was politically as dead as a rusted doornail in an abandoned radioactive toxic Super Fund ghost town, and he's walking around quite flush. As any fan of zombie movies will tell you, when there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth.

Hochul's Special NY Election Win Sends GOP Medicare Busters Reeling

Riding a tide of unprecedented voter turnout, virtual unknown Kathy Hochul, an Erie County Clerk, scored a stunning upset victory over all comers in a race widely seen as a referendum on Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) Medicare-busting Republican 2012 budget proposal.

The Associated Press called the election for Hochul an hour after the polls closed, when, with 71% of precincts reporting, Hochul led Corwin 48% to 42%. The race had been complicated by the presence of failed GOP contender and Tea Party darling Jack Davis, who garnered 8% of the vote.

The special election to fill New York's 26th Congressional District seat, formerly held by disgraced GOP Rep. Chris Lee of shirtless shower photo infamy, had been a yawner until the overwhelmingly solid Republican enclave's supposed shoo-in candidate, Jane L. Corwin, happened to mention she supported Ryan's plan to eliminate Medicare.

After that, things deteriorated quickly for former Wall Street denizen and multi-millionaire Corwin. Hochul pounced on Corwin's Medicare-busting stance and never let go. In a district that had been safely held by Republicans for some forty years and had voted for John McCain in 2008, Hochul went from unknown to well known, and inexorably closed the gap until she finally overtook Corwin and won going away.

Corwin never even had to take her top off.

Ryan's Medicare plan provided all the naked avarice Democrats needed. GOP heavy-hitters John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA) ventured to western New York state to bolster Corwin's chances, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove's pals, and other well-heeled party factors pumped $3.4 million into Corwin's cause to no avail. Eventually, Corwin began sidling away from Ryan's Medicare-busting, saying she would favor changes to Ryan's plan, but it was too late. The Ryan plan sunk Corwin.

Meanwhile, Olympia Snowe (R-ME) became the fourth Senate Republican to back away from the Ryan plan. She announced she would not vote for the House 2012 Budget when Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) brings it up for a Senate vote. Snowe joined fellow Maine Senator Susan Collins in opposing the scheme.

In recent weeks, GOP hopefuls Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump, Mitch Daniels, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour and others have backed away from Presidential runs, although none have cited being saddled with the Ryan Medicare voucherization plan as a defacto running mate.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has been telling anyone who'll listen that he'd like to see Ryan himself run for President in 2012, albeit without a hint of sarcasm. "What Paul Ryan is about is real leadership," Cantor said. As House Budget Committee Chair, Ryan was the architect of the Republicans' vilified 2012 Budget, which endows the wealthiest Americans with another 10% tax break while slashing trillions in vital spending, and features the infamous voucherization of Medicare. Ryan's scheme would hand all of Medicare's money to insurance industry cronies, and force future seniors to buy private insurance with vouchers the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office figures won't cover a third of the cost of premiums, deductibles, co-pays and other expenses.

Upon discovering the Republicans' ignominy, the overwhelming majority of Americans disdained emptying their bank accounts in a vain effort to acquire health care for their sunset years, then dying painfully and miserably in destitution as their loved ones looked on in anguish and horror. Scores of Americans descended on Republican town hall meetings last month to let their tea party legislators know in no uncertain terms what they thought of Ryan voucherization.

"Overwhelmingly supportive," Ryan spun the Medicare onslaught despite needing a police escort to negotiate the gauntlet of screaming constituents surrounding one town hall gathering. Ryan apparently couldn't believe people wouldn't be happy to die horribly and miserably for the greater glory of Paul Ryan. Hitler had the same beef with the troops he sent to the Russian Front.

If that was the greeting Ryan got on his own turf, one had to wonder at Cantor's pushing his golden boy onto the Presidential campaign trail. Ryan didn't even relish running for an open Wisconsin Senate seat, fergawdsake. Perhaps Cantor sees Ryan as a threat to his own power, either as a rival or an embarrassment, and wants to see Ryan to really go down in flames.

The Medicare debacle has become the hardened tip of the spear skewering Republicans.

Last week, Jacksonville, FL elected its first Democratic mayor since about the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Alvin Brown shocked the GOP establishment by becoming the solidly Republican city's first-ever African American Mayor May 18. Brown, a moderate Democrat, won with a strong ground game, the help of old Clinton Administration hands, and local Republican businessmen.

But, the turning point might have come when Florida's Republican Governor Rick Scott endorsed Brown's opponent, Mike Hogan. It turned out that Scott wasn't Hogan's hero. Folks in Florida were peeved at their Gov for slashing education and turning away billions in federal funding for high speed rail. Despite having both a "Rick" and a "Scott" in his name, the governor's endorsement didn't help Hogan, and Jacksonville anointed its first black Democratic mayor.

In Washington, another Scott, this one Brown, stated that he, too, wouldn't be backing Ryan's plan when it comes up for a Senate vote. Brown (R-MA) said, "While I applaud Ryan for getting the conversation started, I cannot support his specific plan."

Rand Paul (R-KY) also found that he couldn't support the Ryan plan, although Paul had the convenient uber-right-wing excuse that Ryan's plan hadn't gone far enough. Paul claimed he couldn't support the Ryan budget because it didn't cut enough from the federal budget. Perhaps he might reconsider if Ryan promised to put Bush Administration torture master John Yoo in charge of Medicare reform.

You knew it was going to be long day for Republicans when the Corwin campaign, possibly alarmed that hundreds of people were waiting since early morning to vote at their polling places, asked a judge Tuesday afternoon for a court order barring certification of the election results pending a show-cause hearing later in the week. The judge impounded all voting equipment and proscribed canvassing paper ballots.

The Corwin campaign insisted such actions were "very typical" in close elections. While Republicans routinely sequester themselves behind locked doors with all the ballots until they come up with a result they like, it's suspicious for anyone to start complaining about the outcome before the voting.

"We want to make sure that every legal vote is counted fairly and accurately," Corwin campaign lackey Chris Grant said. New York residents had better keep a close eye on the GOP minions, as the only "legal" votes Republicans tend to recognize are the ones for their candidate.

Pawlenty Kicks Off Presidential Campaign With Lies About Telling the Truth

Tim Pawlenty, the Republican former Minnesota Governor, has been mooning around the GOP Presidential trail for so long, it's hard to remember he hadn't actually declared he was running for President in 2012.

Pawlenty, affectionately known as Tea Pa among his GOP boosters, was among the first Republicans to form an exploratory committee back in March, just about the time nuclear power was becoming problematic in quake- and tsunami-devastated Japan, and flying into Tripoli International had become dicey for anyone not strapped into a French Rafale jet fighter. He participated in the May 6 GOP debate, and has been stumping around the country for months.

So, Pawlenty figured it was about time he told everyone he was running for President, lest people think he was just cruising for chicks, and told supporters in Iowa as much. Running for President, that is, not cruising for chicks.

"I'm Tim Pawlenty, and I'm running for President of the United States," he said. It was not immediately known how many in the crowd said, "Duh."

Pawlenty promised straight talk and honesty, then immediately began trotting out the Republican laundry list of lies.

"Politicians are often afraid that if they're too honest, they might lose an election. I'm afraid that in 2012, if we're not honest enough, we may lose our country." Tea Pa didn't specify who "we" were.

If Tea Pa were to be honest, he'd tell his audience that thirty years of Republican trickle-down, job-destroying coddling of the richest, most powerful plutocrats in history has plundered the wealth of history's greatest economic engine, and that the nation must reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich and begin progressive revenue reform to balance the books. Instead, he's perpetuating the Republican lie that the only way to deal with the budget deficits and debts Republicans created with their tax giveaways is with more and larger tax breaks for the wealthy, paid for by more and deeper service cuts on everyone else.

If Tea Pa were to be honest, he'd tell his audience that thirty years of tax giveaways and subsidies had concentrated 84% of America's wealth in the hands of 20% of its population, and the imbalance has crippled the government and the people. Instead, he's perpetuating the Republican lie that lower taxes for the rich and subsidies to giant corporations will somehow create jobs, even though big companies are already sitting on more than a trillion dollars in cash and aren't investing in additional capacity or jobs.

If Tea Pa were to be honest, he'd tell everyone that Social Security is solvent for decades, and will remain solvent for the foreseeable future with a slight bump in payroll taxes on his rich buddies, and that Medicare is the nation's most efficient deliverer of health care services, with administrative costs of around 3% compared to 40% on the kind of individual, private insurance policies Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) wants to make future seniors buy. Instead, he's on board with the grand GOP scheme to slash benefits and plunder the Social Security trust funds, hand all the money to their Wall Street cronies, and leave Americans with nothing but the admonition that past performance, dodgy as it was, still doesn't guarantee future results. On Medicare, Tea Pa thinks "Paul Ryan's plan moves in the right direction," toward eliminating Medicare, handing all its money to insurance companies, and pawning off future seniors with vouchers the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reveals won't cover a third of the cost of premiums, deductibles, co-pays and other expenses.

If Tea Pa were to be honest, he'd tell Americans that while debt and deficits are concerns for the long term, right now, the world's bond markets are happy to scarf up as many US Treasuries as we can issue, and right now, America must be investing in infrastructure, education, innovation and rebuilding our manufacturing base. Instead, Tea Pa touts slashing investments, gutting education, and privatizing health care. He toes the Republican Party line that slashing government spending somehow creates jobs, because the government's thrift will somehow magically inspire the private sector to hire and grow.

"We tried Obama's way... and his way failed," Tea Pa crooned. "We're no longer just running out of money, we're running out of time. It's time for new leadership. It's time for a new approach. It's time for America's President, and anyone who wants to be President, to look you in the eye and tell you the truth." In just a handful of words, Pawlenty managed about a half-dozen lies:

• tried Obama's way - Republicans have obstructed and hindered the President's every attempt at governing, from implementing health care reform, to the 2011 and 2012 budgets, to a simple, normally pro-forma vote to raise the debt ceiling.
• his way failed - anemic as it might be, stifled by Republican meddling and obstruction, there is an economy recovery underway, spurred by Obama's limited stimulus efforts and fiscal policies.
• running out of money - America has loads of cash. It's just in the hands of a wealthy elite who've done nothing to earn their windfall from the output of the greatest economic force in history.
• running out of time - only because Republicans kick and scream and obstruct every move while overrunning every deadline with delays and piecemeal incremental hostage-taking.
• time for new leadership - Pawlenty wants the old leadership, a reboot of the disastrous Bush-GOP Reaganomic trickle-down, supply-side, unregulated free-market bubble chaos that crashed the world economy.
• time for a new approach - Pawlenty and the GOP approach isn't new, just the same transfer of wealth from the American people to the ultra-rich, this time focused on plundering of the two final reserves the GOP's plutocrat overlords haven't yet plundered: Social Security and Medicare.

Pawlenty got one thing right: It's time for a Presidential candidate to tell the truth. Clearly, Pawlenty isn't that guy.